Japan’s demographic crisis is deepening faster than expected, with the number of births this year on track to fall below even the government’s most pessimistic projections. According to analysis reported by the Financial Times, preliminary data suggest the total number of Japanese babies born in 2025 is likely to drop below 670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.
Demographics experts say such an outcome would come 16 years earlier than official forecasts anticipated and far below the assumptions used for fiscal and economic planning. The government’s core projections, compiled by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research and last updated in 2023, had estimated about 749,000 births in 2025, with numbers not falling under 670,000 until 2041. Even the government’s most downbeat “low variant” scenario had predicted around 681,000 births for this year.
The expected figure, which excludes children born to foreign residents, is likely to sharpen a sense of urgency over Japan’s rapidly shrinking native population. At the same time, resistance to increased immigration is growing, reflected in recent electoral gains by populist parties sceptical of foreign inflows. This tension is complicating efforts by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to balance economic growth, social stability and demographic decline.
In late November, Takaichi convened the first meeting of a new Population Strategy Headquarters, a task force she created to confront what she has called the country’s “biggest problem.” Japan has already committed about $23 billion over three years to policies aimed at lifting the birth rate, but results remain elusive.
Structural factors continue to weigh heavily on family formation. Annual marriages in Japan, where births outside marriage are rare, have fallen to fewer than 500,000, roughly half the peak reached in 1972. With deaths also rising, Japan’s population shrank by just over 900,000 people in 2024, underlining the scale of the demographic challenge highlighted by the Financial Times.
Masakazu Yamauchi, a demographer at Waseda University, said the 2025 birth total is likely to represent a 3% decline from 686,000 in 2024, marking the 10th consecutive year of record-low births. Preliminary official figures confirming the number are expected early next year.
Economists and opposition politicians are increasingly urging the government to revise its long-term assumptions and plan for a future closer to the most pessimistic demographic scenarios. But acknowledging that shift would be politically costly. Masatoshi Kikuchi, chief equity strategist at Mizuho Securities, said it would amount to admitting that years of policies to raise the birth rate have failed, with unavoidable consequences such as higher taxes and reduced pension benefits.
Some demographers are also watching whether cultural factors could further depress births. The year 2026 coincides with a hinouma, or “fire horse,” in the Japanese astrological calendar, a superstition that led to a 25% plunge in births in 1966. However, experts told the Financial Times that such beliefs are unlikely to carry the same weight today. Takashi Inoue of Aoyama Gakuin University said younger generations, shaped by the age of IT and AI, largely view the “fire horse” as a historical curiosity rather than a guide for decisions about marriage or childbirth.
hilarious. this is what xenophophia and unhealthy work-life balance gets you. Instead of focusing on slaughtering whales and endangered sea life, maybe the Japanese people should refocus their efforts inwardly and fix what is broken with their society.